Legal transcripts are used to memorialize the events which occur in a deposition or courtroom proceeding or the like. After a transcript has been taken of a deposition or court proceeding, a court reporter provides a version of the transcript, either a draft version or a final version, to attorneys, courts, witnesses, or other parties interested in the transcript. A draft or “dirty” or non-final version of a transcript typically has words which are later changed or corrected by the court reporter or by the witness prior to the issuance of a final, clean version of the transcript. Spelling errors, abbreviations, phonetic spellings, are a few examples of the items which are corrected prior to issuance of a final clean transcript. Conventionally, the attorney or paralegal reviews the transcript, such as the draft transcript, and highlights text within the transcript of interest, or makes notes regarding portions of text within the transcript.
As recognized by the present inventors, with the advent of electronic transcripts, there is a need for transferring electronic annotations that are associated with a draft of a transcript so that the annotations are properly associated with a final version of the transcript, so that the annotations can be readily used when referencing the final version of the transcript. Further as recognized by the present inventors, there is a need for analyzing the structure of a selected transcript in order to automatically identify the different sections within a transcript, such as the question and answer pairs, a change of witnesses, a direct examination, a cross-examination, reference to an exhibit, etc.
It is against this background that the various embodiments of the present invention were developed.